Interest in a social.coop nonfiction book club?

We could pick the first month's book via an online poll based on suggestions in a thread like this one. But we probably should at least have 5-10 members, assuming that some folks won't ultimately find the time to participate.

As an example, I'm currently reading "Humanizing the Economy" by John Restakis which looks at the successes/failures of co-ops and co-operative movements around the world.

I would like that very much, count me in!

Brilliant idea, count me in as well!

I'm in.

Fantastic idea, I'm in!

I'm in. So, what is a good platform for online book groups? (This gives us a chance to test out tools.)

I'd be okay with using a Loomio subgroup for the main organizing thread, and Mastodon to share little snippets and comments under a hashtag. I don't think I have the permission to create a sub-group though, so presumably a Loomio admin would have to do it?

Beyond that, a few suggestions for tools people may want to try:

• your local library and its interlibrary loan system, if you don't want to purchase the book of the month ;-)

• Open Library lets you borrow ebooks for a few hundred thousand titles, for free. It's open source and run by the Internet Archive (nonprofit).

• Indiebound is a good way to find local independent booksellers for a given book if you don't want to buy from Amazon. (I learned about it on social.coop!)

• Inventaire is a way to manage your own bookshelf and borrow from friends. It's open source and integrates with Wikidata.

I'm personally behind lib.reviews which is a free/open/nonprofit platform for reviews. I write all my book reviews there. It integrates with Wikidata and Open Library for search. It's not a co-op yet and I'm interested in going that direction if other folks are.

Other ideas/suggestions? :)

I'm in, and my hackerspeace has been using Loomio for our monthly book club, with the following process:
- All members may add as many books as they want to a shared spreadsheet. Entries include name, author, pub date, pages, a description lifted from the Amazon page, and the submitter's name.
- Each month we use a random number generator to select 8 books from the list.
- Club members rank-choice vote the 8 options, with the winner being the next book.

If this sounds good to folks, I could make a copy a black version of the google sheet we've been using for this. I also think creating a subgroup would be good, so everyone not in the group doesn't get spammed by emails.

Also, my hackerspace's book club meets the same day every month, but for us, I think it might make sense to take the person who submitted the winning book with creating a schedule poll based on their availability for that meeting, so they take on the "host" role...

Would love to see the spreadsheet template you're using for sure! I also like the idea of tasking the person who nominated the "winning" book with keeping the ball rolling. :) Perhaps we can get this done asynchronously without a scheduled meeting, as long as all book club members follow the sub-group / hashtag we set up.

Matt, I think your framework is good, a subgroup makes sense. Three suggestions: 1) using the description from the publisher, rather than Amazon. 2) what about using a dot vote to choose from suggested readings? 3) alternative to a google sheet (just to practice finding and using alternatives)?

1. Sounds like a better idea.
2. We tried dot voting in my hackerspace's book club, but the ability to weight votes became a source of friction, and everyone has been much happier with ranked choice.
3. @mayel has been creating sandstorm spreadsheets for us. I could create a spreadsheet in gdocs, and perhaps he'd be game to translate it to that?

Sounds great. I can see how ranked voting plus random selection would be useful.

Brilliant idea, count me in as well!

What the heck, sounds like fun...

I am curious about the reasoning behind restricting books to non-fiction - could you elaborate? There are other literary genres that can communicate "non-fiction" (i.e. real) concepts and ideas more effectively than some non-fiction pieces on the same topics (e.g. uptopia/dystopia), so - before hearing your reasoning - I would value having submission guidelines be more open.

Cheers! Emily Alice

The "nonfiction" category may indeed exclude too many books that may be of interest to lots of folks. I would suggest to limit the scope somewhat, to align it with people's interests as far as we can guess at them.

How about something like "Books that communicate a positive or cooperative vision of society, that offer practical solutions for cooperative practitioners and organizers, or that examine the successes and failures of cooperative movements of the past and present."

That would be inclusive of both fiction and nonfiction, but exclude the pure dystopia genre, and/or generic fiction and non-fiction without any relation to cooperative approaches.

I think we can interpret these terms broadly -- this would just be a guidepost, and the voting process would be where the real preferences get shaken out.

I'm definitely more friendly to guiding selections via this means than by genre. Thanks for being open and creative about it. E

I'm in

Hi Erik, would you be willing to reformulate your idea as a proposal, incorporating the various suggestions? We can see if all are in agreement and move to scheduling and setting up the readings database.

Two items:
- Here is the link to the template spreadsheet we've been using for my hackerspace's book club.
- Here is a draft "charter" for the group that I just wrote up aiming to intergrate the ideas from this conversation. As it can be unwieldy to manage amendments in Loomio's voting process, I will create a check poll to collect comments and feedback on this draft, and then let's create a formal proposal once those comments have been integrated.

I can't make any promises, as I've already committed to the wiki and have to consider my school work load, but I'd at least want to sit in on a few discussions. If a book seems like something I would want to read, I'd definitely read it.

I'm game. I've read some of the more popular econ non-fiction (Debt, Economism, etc) and should probably broaden my reading to cover some political discourse, too.

I love it!

I'm interested and so have indicated as such, but not sure I'd actually be able to carve out the time! Would definitely lurk to see people's book suggestions though and may suggest some of my own favourites too! :)

I love the idea - I'm unlikely to be able to actively get involved until after May this year, but look forward to joining in then.

I'm in a similar space to @jdaviescoates ! love the idea; not sure if i'd have time; mostly will depend on what book is chosen, as I've currently challenged myself to read only books written by (or highly recommended by) POC...

When the suggestion spreadsheet comes up, one I'll offer is Collective Courage by Jessica G Nembhard (:

I'd be up for reading that as I have it and have started it but haven't got too far yet as the intro stuff at the beginning isn't new to me and so not very engaging...but looking forward to getting to the juicer bits :)

In case you missed it further up:

Link to join the new Reading Group sub-group (skips the "ask to join" process):
https://www.loomio.org/invitations/48bb46540e81a78685e4

Link to the spreadsheet - already 8 suggestions, please add yours:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZvZ_MLq1dAVBCY7-e9Iylg-qxWYqkcptjvOnkyOTeTA/edit#gid=0

Further posts will be to the sub-group so as not to spam people who aren't interested. I'm really excited about diving into some great texts with y'all, and also heartened by the awesome collaborative effort to get this off the ground :-)